4
“Olympia.…”
“Olympia,” came the voice again.
I was floating, peacefully alone, and some pestering thing had broken the tranquility. My brain tried to ignore it, but.…
“Olympia?”
I reluctantly opened my eyes to find an angel hovering above me, an angel that somehow reminded me of my cat, Mr. Tweedles. No wait, not an angel, it was a nurse. That’s right. A few days ago I’d installed that system, and I was back at the doctor’s office getting it activated. They’d sedated me again. Closing my eyes, I brought up a hand to rub my face, and then opened them and sighed irritably. “Yes?”
“Seems like someone needs a little more sleepy time,” laughed the nurse. “Come on, I’ll get you up and dressed.”
I propped myself up on my elbows and frowned at her. “How long was I out?”
“Hmm…,” she considered. “About two hours, I’d say. Everything seems to be working perfectly. We just activated the system. Your proxxi will explain everything to you once you get home. I would have woken you sooner, but you seemed so peaceful.”
Shaking my head, I swung my legs off the side of the pod as I sat up, pushing off her attempts to help me. “I can take it from here, thank you very much.”
She looked at me and narrowed her eyes, but then her smile returned and she turned to go. “I’m going to bring you in to speak to the doctor before you leave—he needs to have a final word,” she said on her way out and closed the door behind her.
After a minute or two I finished getting dressed and opened the door to walk into the hallway. The nurse watched me from a distance, studying me. I stopped at the doctor’s office and half-hung my head inside.
“How do you feel?” he asked immediately, looking up from some paperwork. “Please, come in.”
“No, no, I’m fine. I mean, I just want to get going. I’ve got things to do. So just tell me quick, what do I need to know?”
He paused. “You have a very powerful new tool at your disposal. Be careful with it, and don’t activate any of the distributed consciousness features yet.”
“Distributed consciousness,” I snorted, looking back toward the nurse who’d positioned herself behind me in the hallway. “Where do they get these ideas?”
“If you want to talk with me,” the doctor continued patiently, “just say my name anytime of the day or night and you will be instantly patched through to me.”
“Great,” I replied. “Got it.”
“When you get home today, just say ‘pssi instructions’ and you will get all the information you need from your new proxxi.”
“Perfect.” I felt almost cheerful, sensing an imminent exit. “I’ll be in touch.”
With the tiniest of waves I bid him good-bye and marched off down the hallway and out the door, purposely ignoring the nurse who watched me the whole way out.
The air outside was crisp and fresh, and for the first time in ages I felt a surge of optimism. I should walk home—I could use a breath of fresh air.
I stopped to light a cigarette.
I’d decided that I hadn’t made a mistake with Alex. I needed to be alone for a while.
The heat of late summer was just winding down, and the air had a refreshing edge. I strode energetically along the sidewalks, enjoying myself, looking at everything around me.
I didn’t feel any different, and a part of me doubted that whatever they had done would work as well as it was billed—despite that I was marketing it. The crowds on the Upper East Side were dense but navigable, with billboards and holograms cluttering the view, but it still made for a nice walk. Eventually, I arrived at the personal oasis of my brownstone walk-up.
Mr. Tweedles sprang at me the moment I opened the door and began purring loudly as he rubbed himself against my pant leg. I closed the door and emptied my pockets. The cat had been my friend Mary’s idea. To provide some companionship, she’d said. I shooed him away, hating the thought of all the hair he was depositing on me with each purring caress.
Immediately, I made for the bottle of wine on my kitchen counter and poured myself a glass. Collapsing onto my couch, I drank a big mouthful, savoring it. Rummaging around in my purse, I found the last cigarette in my pack. With all this technological wizardry, you’d think they could invent a realistic endless cigarette—those e-cigarettes were just so unsatisfying. I crumpled up the empty cardboard packaging and threw it onto the table.
Might as well get it over with. “Pssi instructions,” I called out, lighting up my smoke.
“System activated,” I heard from a voice that seemed to be inside my head. “I will now appear on the chair beside you. Please do not be alarmed.”
With that, something materialized beside me sitting on my matching armchair, something that looked sort of like me. In fact, it looked exactly like me.
“I am your new polysynthetic sensory interface—or pssi—proxxi,” it said. “I will now explain the system features to you. You can stop me at any time.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I objected, waving my smoke in front of me, “hold on a sec.”
I wanted to get Kenny from work in on this. I fumbled around in my purse for my mobile.
“You don’t need your mobile anymore,” suggested my new proxxi, seeming to know what I was thinking. That stopped me in my tracks.
“Kenny?” I called out tentatively, and his projection instantly appeared floating in the middle of my living room. Always dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, with eternally messy hair, Kenny constantly frustrated my requests for more formal office attire. He was dedicated, however, and a consummate nerd when it came to technology, so I put up with him.
“Yes, boss?” he asked from behind his square-rimmed glasses. “Whoa, you got some kind of fancy lens display system going on?”
I’d tripped his geek-chic alarm, and I waited for him to collect himself.
“Please listen to what, this, ah, woman is saying,” I said, pointing toward my new proxxi. “Pssi interface, or proxxi, or whatever, please continue.”
Kenny’s eyes grew wide as the proxxi began describing the system controls. I just sat back and enjoyed one glass of wine and then another.
Presently, the proxxi faded away and I turned to Kenny to finish up. “Can I give you root access to my system and you handle the settings and dealing with this proxxi? I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and quite frankly I find it, or her, or whatever, disturbing.”
“Not sure, boss. From what I understood, you can’t hand off all the root functions, but give me a day or two to look into it.”
His geek love was sparking hard.
“Just don’t waste too much time, right?” He’d just use this as an excuse to duck out of other work if I let him.
He nodded. “Right.”
“Any problem I have, I just call your name and you pop up, right?”
“Exactly. Anytime, anywhere.”
“Perfect.”
I was about to dismiss him, but he was staring at me intently. “What?”
“You were you paying attention to the safety stuff, right?” he asked. “If you need to reset the system there’s this hardwired gesture recognition.” He began motioning in the air, reaching toward his chest and twisting and pulling. It looked ridiculous.
“Look, Kenny, I’ve got you, right? Or Dr. Simmons, or failing that, I just call this proxxi thing, correct?”
He stopped what he was doing in mid-motion. “Sure, yeah.”
“Just take care of it for me, okay?”
“Okay, boss.”
“Now, please, set it so it removes all advertising as my doctor prescribed.”
There was a short pause while he spoke to my new proxxi on his end.
“All done,” he replied quickly. He smiled and raised his eyebrows.
That was fast. I had to admit I liked not needing the mobile bud anymore, and the technology looked amazing, even from just the proxxi session.
Waving Kenny away, I settled back into the couch and let Mr. Tweedles cuddle up into me. I scratched his ears and felt him purring, and then felt a sudden twinge of realization that Alex wouldn’t be coming by anymore. It’s just and me and you, Mr. Tweedles.